The Soft Underbelly of Civil Conversation
by aragonite
Summary: I'm working on Book II now...and here is a re-vamped up chapter...


_This was a chapter that had a lot of people rolling in my then-posted novella, "TEST OF THE PROFESSIONALS" explaining not just Lestrade's future wife, but why he was lucky to survive the courtship. This is in the second part of my upcoming book, "LEAP YEAR," sequel to "YOU BUY BONES." There was a lot I wanted to do at the time when I first posted, but I also didn't want to cram Gone with the Wind on the page. Today I decided, to heck with it._

_For those who didn't read LY before it was pulled, Clea was rescued from a politically-themed kidnapping and Lestrade barely survived the adventure. Poisoned morphine at the hospital kept him longer than planned and Clea is just beginning to get to the point where she can return to working at her cooking-shop and not jump at every shadow. However, Lestrade has so far managed to avoid explaining himself after making some leading comments about his feelings. Bradstreet saw him to his rooms after the hospital and ordered up a supper at Clea's shop. Bradstreet is not the brightest star when it comes to women; it never crossed his mind that she would be angry at all those missed conversations she had planned on having with Lestrade…_

**18: The Soft Underbelly of Civil Conversation **

_You can do this,_ Clea thought. _You know you can._

The little woman braced herself, squared her shoulders and knocked on the door as the fuss and muss of Paddington Street rattled on behind her back. Almost instantly a cat on the other side fiddled up a complaint. Fruit-sellers and fishmongers quarreled viciously as they passed, adding trepidation about her illicit venture. Mr. Bradstreet had not asked who at the 'Rose would deliver Mr. Lestrade's purchased supper; bless the sweet Bow Street lackwit. Of course it might not occur to him that an unaccompanied lady would be rushing off to such a mad delivery as this.

Clea didn't like having doubts. They made her think that the anger that fueled this decision to interrogate Mr. Lestrade inside his own domicile might _possibly_ be in error. Most Cheathams never even thought that far (before or aft) but sadly she was the exception of the sept.

She was sweating slightly. Her nerves prickled beneath her skin. She was a little frightened and it made her wonder if she were out of practice with risk-taking. At the same time, she was very much angry and troubled at the veritable rainfall of speculation and innuendo her family carried about not just Mr. Lestrade, but the lot of the Scotland Yard Inspectors per se.

_They were poor pretending to be better, _went the words_. They'll eat pig because they can't buy beef. They'll even keep a pig in the back of their cheap little tenants. They put their suits in the pawnshop and buy them back for Sunday. They'll eat potatoes and parsley for a week at a time._

This was getting nowhere. With resolution, Clea knocked again. The cat all but sobbed and she took pity, tested the iron handle. A muffled child's voice from far within told her to come in. She did; a cat far too revolting to be a pet (it wore more cob-webs on its sides than a bottle of old Burgundy) nipped past her skirts and down the road without a thank you.

"You're quite welcome." She scoffed to its vanishing and dusty black tail. Her annoyance gave her the strength to push open the rest of the door.

She was unsettled at having her family's speculations proved so wrong at first glance. Her father was rarely wrong in anything. And yet…this portion of street was separate; its own little world with narrow houses that were small and mean-set in appearance before one noted they were also clean and well-kept. Pennies were being put to repair work, not to drink and dance. And she _did_ smell pig…but it wasn't near. The odour was nothing like it should be if there was a coyte behind the building.

The inside of this lodging-house (Clea had no idea what to call this preponderance of close-set brick with stone trim) was clean enough to suit a sailor in cool blue plaster walls above walnut-stained wainscot and stairs. An extravagance of coloured-glass sun windows threw brilliant wings of light upon the foyer.

She smelled food cooking from somewhere deep in the building: simmering soup with celery and cream, leeks and a dash of a spice that made her wonder if the cook went to the Hindoo markets.

A Dandie Dinmont terrier greeted her. It scampered down the chocolate-carpeted stairs with too much speed to be sensible and spun into the wall, making her laugh under her breath. Clea suddenly felt better about her journey, and remembered the pot in her hands was as good as a passport. Undaunted, the little dog ran back up the landing and spun a circle at the door. "You want me to open it, little fellow?" She guessed with fair confidence. The dog blurred his tail but did not bark; strange terrier not to bark. Under a little top-knot of fur the black eyes gleamed in conspiracy.

"'E wants in the Inspector's Room." Offered the little boy with a clean face that mismatched his shirt. Clea wondered where he had come from. The child's legs were bowed slightly; rickets? He sat on the top stair with a bilbo, patiently tossing the ball into the cup with monotonous skill.

"I'm here to deliver the supper he ordered, young sir." Clea felt on firmer ground. Children spurred that reaction.

The urchin shrugged. "G'wan, let him in. He spends his nights in 'e's room when he's done with the rats."

"You have rats?"

"Course not. We have to let him out the snicket into the back-garden." The boy was slightly impatient of dull adults. In dignified disgust he picked up his toy and went back up the next landing, trailing the odour of turpentine and linseed oil. Clea was positive she wouldn't even warrant a note of gossip with his family. She also noted he did not bother to let the dog in the room even though it was clear her hands were full with the small tureen. _Imp_. Clea set her lips and knocked. The terrier quivered in the ecstasy of anticipation. It just then occurred to Clea that her work-dress with its button-over apron made her look like one of her own tweenys. No wonder the boy had just suggested she walk in. _Imp and twice._

There was no answer; the dish was heavy, and the dog was trying to speak with his large brown eyes. She took the advice of Lestrade's other tenant, juggled the pot against her corset, turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Mrs. Collins' terrier was just large enough to wake a man if he jumped full-weight on his chest. Lestrade had been deeply asleep; his first thought was a heart attack. His next was there were worse things than being waylaid by a small rodent-killing dog with breath to match his profession…but at the moment none came to mind. With the patience of long practice he swept the dog back on the floor and let his hand drop so it could pay attention to his hand and not his face. As always, it thought it all a game and jumped nimbly back. "Why couldn't you be a lorikeet?" He mumbled in the latest chapter of nearly two years of exasperation.

"I don't think lorikeets do well with rats."

Lestrade stopped moving. He felt his eyes expand past their normal limits at the same time his brain decided to stop working. _Damn_. A working brain would be a very good thing to have right now.

Clea paused with what she could admit was a bit of mean pleasure and watched him realise he had two guests in his rooms—one human. To give him credit, he did not ask a pointless question, such as what she was doing; the dinner pot was a dead giveaway.

Naturally, she pressed the advantage. "Since you were still recuperating, Mr. Bradstreet ordered a dish."

Lestrade wondered if there were moral complications to strangling one's best friend. _And_ she was waiting for him to say something stupid; he might as well get it over with. "I'll admit I'm not at full par in the wits right now, Miss Cheatham, but is your escort coming along soon?"

Clea didn't blink. "What, are you suggesting my reputation isn't safe with you? You look like you couldn't win against a plate of macaroni."

Lestrade took a deep breath. _Game, set and match—round to Cheatham and the game board evaporated by a cannonball._ The aftershock rang in his ears.

"You can't be that upset," she pointed out inexorable as a toppling obelisk. "Or you'd be blushing."

"I'm not a doctor, but the last I heard, one needed _blood_ to blush with."

"Mn, yes, you do look rather pale." Clea was being polite.

"Rather pale?" He repeated ironically. "Is that the best you can do, Miss Cheatham?"

"Well, I could say something more accurate and to the point, such as a caution not to go wandering around any graveyards; I hear the body-thieves are on the look for new specimens now that the weather's cooled." She paused. "On second thought, perhaps you should. The sight of you could return even the most potential villain into a religious reformation."

"No, thank you. I've already ruined one suit this week. After the shoes, that's the first thing they take." Lestrade prayed for a swift recovery. "May I ask what compelling circumstance has led you to an unannounced, _un-escorted_ visit?"

Clea snorted. She did not sniff; a sniff was far too prim for her capacity for contempt. "You owe me two conversations, Mr. Lestrade. I visited every day while you were in the hospital, but you weren't exactly in fit shape to contribute." She folded her hands in her lap. "The door to the hallway is open, so anyone can look and see for themselves I'm not trying to garrote you, or loot your possessions—"

"You're worried about _my_ reputation?" Lestrade rubbed his aching head.

She lifted an eyebrow. "There's little point in worrying about mine now, is there?" Her voice was sharp and knife-edged with bitterness.

The silence in the room grew painful. Clea clasped her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling. Her sally had not been planned; it just came out. He looked every bit as horrified and embarrassed as she felt. Only the dog was unimpressed.

In the meantime she was passing her eyes over everything he owned in the two rooms. It didn't take long. Neat as a pin, but there wasn't much to look at. He hadn't been embarrassed at his possessions or his decorating in…ever.

Bradstreet once complained that the cracks in the plaster always stood up and saluted before one's in-laws came to visit. He didn't think that was an amusing sort of witticism any more.

_Stop thinking about the rend in the drugget and think about the fact that there's a young woman sitting in your guest-chair __**almost**__ in your bedroom._

"I…would hope," Lestrade spoke as carefully as possible, "That no one is petty enough to see what happened to you as an excuse for slander and gossip."

Clea tightened her chin. "I would hope too." She answered. "But ours is not a fluid society, Mr. Lestrade. As you are aware."

"Yes." He answered with his own bitterness. "But there's no need to throw fuel on the fire. You really shouldn't be here."

"I tried to speak with you properly!" She snapped. "I visited you every day at the hospital, _with an escort_. I waited as long as I could; I watched you thrash in the grip of fever; I saw you endure the memory of Mr. Quimper's attack, _and I could do nothing else!"_

Either Lestrade was getting savvy to Clea, or blood loss aided thought. "It wasn't your responsibility to do anything!" He spoke as firmly as possible—which wasn't really; he just wanted to send her home to her father. "The doctors were the physicians—they knew what to do; I didn't even know you were there, Miss Cheatham—I didn't know anyone was there!"

"Yes…it was quite clear you were out of your mind and somewhere else." Clea granted him the point reluctantly. "But you could have easily died, and we would still be out our promised conversations."

When faced with unequal pressure, the containing vessel inevitably gives way. "Miss Cheatham," Lestrade spoke as patiently as he knew how—why _couldn't_ she be a lorikeet? "I'm not going to insult you by speaking as if you're a proper English fainting violet. Really I'm not. Proper Englishwomen do not carry knives under their aprons—though I think more of them should." Oh, the number of cases that would have been prevented on his desk if only a woman could defend her ownself. "Getting killed in the line of duty…well, that's all part of the duty. I'm a policeman. I don't want you to think that what happened with Jethro Quimper was completely out of the ordinary."

Clea regarded him without blinking. Lestrade tried not to think of how the walls needed a new coat of paint. And there was dust on the sill. "Are you trying to tell me this sort of nonsense happens regularly?" She finally asked. "For I do find that hard to believe."

"No. No, of course not." Lestrade counted backwards for patience; it was horrible enough that she was in his rooms and in a position to examine every tiny flaw in his wall-paper, floor, drugget and furniture. "It doesn't happen all the time, but there is only one thing about this mess—I mean, case—that set it apart from the others." He absently pushed the dog back off the bed. "One's killer does not normally pause to have a conversation with them while they are killing them."

Clea threw him off by taking another tack: "I think he did it to frighten me."

_And it most certainly worked,_ Lestrade thought but he had enough sense not to say it. Clea Cheatham was terrified under her skin; terrified enough that she had to risk the insanity of seeing him with her own two eyes with or without an escort. Lestrade had a feeling she had planned on not having an escort, because one didn't just talk about this kind of thing with a third party present.

Seeing her frightened reminded him that bars worked both ways. Quimper was protected from his victims as much as it was the other way around.

"Jethro Quimper has spent his life in the study of man, Miss Cheatham. We are nothing more than tools or…or chess-pieces. He understands us for the same reason why a hunter wants to read up on big-game animals. You surprised him; I'm pleased he's deep behind bars away from the sunlight because you will not manage to fool him the same way twice." She shivered and Lestrade experienced a fundamental self-loathing. "We do not have all his men, Miss Cheatham. We do not even know who he was working for—and I certainly don't know what all this was about the warehouse! But believe me when I say if this was merely a case of one's reputation…" _Go ahead and out with it, Geoffrey Broc._ "Miss Cheatham, I don't think you're safe."

Her lapis eyes were a mixture of determination and suspicion. "You sound very sure of that." She said.

"I'm not sure, so I should be certain that things are potentially dangerous!" Lestrade gave up on reason; most women were quite well versed in the art, but Clea had a score to settle with him and it was clouding her judgment. He pulled the covers off; for a split second Clea's eyes went wide in shock and then she realised he was fully dressed under the blankets. His dayshirt had been of the type like a nightshirt. It was too late to stop her blush.

**Point to Lestrade. Score: Tie.**

"I'm seeing you home right now." The detective managed to speak fairly calmly (exasperation always got the better of him even more than genuine anger). Clea remained seated, possibly fuming underneath that cherry-red face and neck and _certainly_ plotting him mischief while he stepped into his shoes, rose, turned, flipped the bed back to normal, and reached for the tie folded in the coffee-tin with his collars. It was the fastest ablution of his life and he didn't even trap his fingers in the knots.

Clea's small hands rested calmly enough in her lap, but her eyes were narrowing by degrees as her nearly-fatal moment of embarrassment subsided. She deliberately glared at him while he buttoned up his waistcoat and shook out his jacket.

"I'll concede you are correct, Mr. Lestrade." She stood grandly; the Queen could have taken lessons from this little diva. "You may escort me home for that reason."

Lestrade stopped in the middle of a button. "You'll concede I am correct." He repeated evenly. "That is quite gratifying. Is there a particular motive in your out-of-character capitulation?"

"I cannot get my conversations out of you if I permit myself to be bogged down in tangents." She lifted her chin. "And we are having our conversations." Her lips set. _Soon_, her eyes vowed. _Soon or I'm coming here again, and if I have to come here again, I'll be bringing hospital restraints with me._

_Just you try it,_ Lestrade glared back. _I'm not leaving my door unlocked ever again and there's a revolver right where I can reach it in the bedstead drawer._

_This is not over, Mr. Lestrade._

_I can see that, Miss Cheatham. _

Lestrade felt—and heard—his heart thump against the underside of his ribs to walk almost into his landlady's arms. The elderly woman was standing, ramrod-straight as usual with her hands neatly folded within her puffed sleeves. Only Lestrade's long experience with the fearsome old she-bear tipped him off to a dreadful truth: That behind the stern schoolmarm's expression, she was smiling all the way down to her toes.

"You needn't be so stiff on my account, either of you." Mrs. Collins informed them with that strange, accomplished mixture of wordlyness the amused and jaded carried about. "I was of course watching out for you both." Her dark eyes almost—but not quite—twinkled. "I _do_ run a respectable house."

Lestrade offered his arm in frozen courtesy. Clea took it with equal warmth. In Arctic silence they descended the stairwell to Paddington Street.


End file.
